This dramatic painting illustrates an episode from the journeys of the Greek hero Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) told in the poet Homer’s Odyssey in which the infamous Sirens lured unwary sailors towards perilous rocks and
their doom by singing in the most enchanting manner. Odysseus wished to hear the Siren’s song and ordered his crew to lash him to a mast and block their ears in order to ensure their safe passage. Waterhouse has depicted
each Siren with the body of a bird and the head of a beautiful woman, which came as a surprise to Victorian audiences, who were more used to seeing these mythic creatures portrayed as comely mermaid-like nymphs. He
borrowed the motif from an ancient Greek vase that he studied in the British Museum.
When Ulysses and the Sirens was first exhibited, at London’s Royal Academy in 1891, the painting was praised by most art critics of the day. MH Spielmann, writing for the Magazine of Art, declared it: ‘a very startling
triumph … a very carnival of colour, mosaicked and balanced with a skill more consummate than even the talented artist was credited with … The quality of the painting is … a considerable advance upon all his antecedent
work’.
At the time of Sir Hubert von Herkomer’s purchase of this picture for the National Gallery of Victoria, in June 1891, the Ulysses was only the second work by John William Waterhouse to be acquired for a public gallery.
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